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::SIGH::

Lazy Pianist,

This proves it. . .

A partisan would say ::SIGH::

A true global thinker would say ::YAWN::



A clear thinker like me would say. . .

::When's Dinner, and Where's the Beef!::

(Hmm, that should teach me to respond to a screen that sat unrefreshed for a few hours...need to tweak this a bit...)

The barb was thrown at those frequent posters here who view themselves as conservatives - not at some vague undefinable group; not saying that there is this problem that some people have, etc. - rather, that a specific, easily identifiable group of people exhibit the trait. And, with a few rare exceptions, I disagree that these particular people exhibit the trait mentioned. Instead, I perceive, LP, that you are trying to marginalize the reasoned opinions of these people by calling them more narrow minded and partisan than you are yourself. In short, you're falling into the very same "us versus them" problem that you are decrying.

I think that your choice of words in that post showed a bit more of your actual preconceived mindset than you may have otherwise wanted to expose. I also think that your claims at this point that you're not saying, or even implying that being either "partisan" or "being more broad-minded" is better than the other, that they're both equally important and valid is a bit of an Orwellian language game - and again, one that doesn't square with the original words that you typed and are now trying to defend and redefine.

Everyone has biases in their guiding paradigms. Only fools deny it, claiming that only others are so burdened. And LP, I know you're no fool.

And benedict: I consider you a friend, and my friends just call me Dwain.

"Yawn...hey, can't a feller get some sleep?" :p

OK,Dwain.

Sadly, and I say this as someone who DID NOT SUPPORT the policy, the evidence is becoming pretty clear that it actually DID bear some fruit. If we are to believe U.S. military intelligence now, an awful lot of it.

P.S. This is a position (that the process of U.N. inspectors, coupled with sanctions, worked) that the Administration may be slowly coming around to:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...0030527/ts_nm/iraq_rumsfeld_weapons_dc_1

Just $100 billion and more than a hundred American lives (and thousands of Iraqi ones) late.
This is nothing to celebrate.

(I'm still rooting for the stupidity hypothesis, as hard as I find it to stomache. :rolleyes: )

I am beginning come to the same conclusion. As the saying goes,only fools rush in....

That is not exactly what this article says. I cite from the article:

Rumsfeld told the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations think-tank he did not know why Iraq had not used chemical weapons against the invaders as Washington had predicted it would.

He said the speed of U.S. advance may have caught Iraq by surprise, but added: "It is also possible that they decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict."

Rumsfeld told his audience of foreign policy analysts, diplomats and business leaders that he suspected "we'll find out a lot more information as we go along and keep interrogating people."

Rumsfeld said Iraq was as large as California and search teams had only been working there seven weeks. He said there were hundreds of suspected sites to investigate.

"It will take time," said Rumsfeld.

On May 13, Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, also raised the possibility that Iraq had destroyed its weapons stocks.

"I just don't know whether it was all destroyed years ago -- I mean, there's no question that there were chemical weapons years ago -- whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they're still hidden," Petraeus said.

No where do I see any indication that UN weapons inspections are thought to have worked. If these weapons were destroyed at all (and we still don't know) they were most likely destroyed just prior to the invasion. In other words, it was the pressure of imminent invasion and not inspection teams that precipitated their destruction. Otherwise, if Saddam Hussein had destroyed them years ago why did he just not come clean and prove it.

Bottom line, however, is that we don't know what happened to these weapons and this article says exactly that.

This is something I find interesting:

Rumsfeld said U.S. intelligence agents had confirmed that two trailers found in northern Iraq were mobile biological weapons laboratories. No actual biological weapons were found on either trailer, U.S. officials have said.

It would seem that they have found evidence of a weapons program even if they have not, as yet, found the weapons.

I read in the second line,

"It is possible they destroyed them prior to the conflict."

Duh -- what happened prior to the conflict? We (Donald Rumsfeld and I) watched the Iraqis destroy 70 SAM missiles on national tv under the supervision of the U.N. -- did you miss it on CBS that night?

But the real issue is why is U.S. military intelligence so absolutely miserably poor in either case? The quality of the intelligence reports is making the 12,000 pages of BS look like the Bible! :p

I can't say that I am entirely satisfied with the performance of our intelligence agencies either although I understand that there is considerable probability of error in whatever they can devine from their sources. Still, I have to agree that they need to do a lot better. Maybe they should be allowed to associate with people a bit more shady than a scoutmaster or sunday school teacher going forward. It would seem that the better intelligence could be had from those who have, shall we say, more checkered pasts.